Castability Assessment and Data Integration for Die Casting Design

ABSTRACT

Castability assessment requires the development of methods that help users to measure the overall castability of a design and to evaluate the trade-offs inherent in configuring the die casting die. This research will develop simple mathematical models, scaling methods, and decision support aids. A set of indicators, such as the variance in wall thickness, will be extracted from the CastView data for input to the decision support model. Researchers will define data requirements for evaluation, and develop and test extraction techniques.
The research also will address methods to deal with geometric data that is defined using CastView. Geometric features are important information for the toolmaker. Exporting this information from CastView can accelerate the die design process. Researchers will develop and implement methods to export the data in a form that can be imported into a CAD system.
Specifically, the goal of this project is to improve the pace of the die casting part and die design process. It also is to improve the quality of die castings by:
- Providing techniques to quantitatively evaluate overall castability of a proposed part design and die configuration.
- Providing methods and data to directly evaluate the trade-offs between filling, cooling, and ejection as effected by parting plane and die configuration decisions.
- Providing techniques to export all geometric data produced within the CastView environment for use in computer-aided design.